As a general concept, a longer password is more secure than a more complex one, because you have increased the number of potential combinations. However, if you use special characters, you can have a similar effect, because you have increased the number of possibilities, and it is very likely that they are not in the Rainbow Tables or brute force character set.

A friend had a password cracker a couple of years ago...............I just created a password with € the Euro currency symbol, as the first character................it got nowhere, as it did not have that symbol in its tables.

So, to answer your question, a 20 character pass is more secure than an 18 character one for the same level of complexity. And the larger the password, the less chance that anyone other than the Feds and the Spooks have Rainbow Tables to crack it.

Cheers

January 20th, 2005, 09:48 PM

Opeth

You are right nihil!... But I prefer using bothe concepts when forming a password. Mixing is the best concept.